


Universal Constants

by galateaGalvanized



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Asking for a friend., Canon Compliant, Enemies to Lovers, Is it still voyeurism if you're watching your future self?, M/M, Soulmates, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:02:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25977907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galateaGalvanized/pseuds/galateaGalvanized
Summary: Bumblebee’s jaw drops, and he forces it shut with a loud snap. “No, no way. There’s no way that Starscream and I are some sort of universal constant. That’s impossible.”Starscream coughs. “More orlessimpossible than some ancient Prime knowing what our spikes look like?”Or:Starscream and Bumblebee find a device that can predict the future, and it isn't exactly what they'd expect.
Relationships: Bumblebee/Starscream (Transformers)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 100





	Universal Constants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elefluff (elefxxk)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elefxxk/gifts).



> Endless, infinite thanks to V and Monibot for the beta. Hanna, this may be a little later than expected, but I sure hope you enjoy it!

The floor of the cave has a very slight downward slope, and the omnipresent clay slicks most of the loose rocks into fall hazards. Bumblebee’s headlights illuminate brown, dripping stalactites that bud like flowers on the ceiling. Forward motion is slow and rife with risks, from crumbling overhangs and the black water running beneath his slip-sliding feet. It’s a miserable, wet slog, and he can’t help but feel like he’s chasing myths. The only thing he knows is that this cave supposedly holds an ancient weapon powerful enough to end the war; he has no idea what it’s actually supposed to _look like_.

At last, he hits a dead end in a vast cavern. The huge dark space echoes with the sound of fiercely running water splashing into a pool below, and he comes to a rock ledge on one side of a terrible, jagged crevasse. Even his high beams can’t cut through the dark to find the other side of the divide. Something about the place—the air, the darkness, even the shape of it—feels familiar. It’s like a memory from before the war, before he met Optimus, and before he even started running deliveries. He can’t put his finger on it.

Standing on the edge of the precipice, he wishes absently for a flight mode that he could use to get across. At last, he sighs and turns to investigate what he can. His spark leaps when he thinks he finds Ancient Cybertronian carved into the wall. When he looks closer, though, the writing resolves itself into mere gouges in the rock. There is still no hint or glimpse of the war-ending superweapon foretold by Optimus’ Golden Age texts. 

He stays for hours, hoping to find a secret button hidden in a stalagmite or a message in the calcite veins. Bumblebee sighs, exhausted, and places his hand on a wall. He wishes Optimus were here. An ex-archivist would know what to look for, and any hidden secret weapon would certainly open for a _Prime_. 

As he turns to leave, dejected, he hears the impossible sound of wind whistling through an engine. Lights cut through the black on the other side of the impassable crevasse. Bumblebee stares in shock as the pinpricks of white and red resolve themselves into the familiar running lights on the underside of a Decepticon jet—on the underside of _Starscream_. 

The jet times his transformation to robot mode so that his feet hit the bedrock at the last possible second. “Oh, if it isn’t precious little Bumblebee,” he says, standing up to his full height. “What a surprise to find you here.”

“Starscream! Back-off,” Bumblebee demands, regaining his footing and drawing his blaster. 

“Sure,” Starscream sneers as he starts to move towards the rest of the cave, completely dismissing Bumblebee as a threat. “ _After_ I find this Golden Age superweapon and kill Megatron with it. Tell me where it is, and I promise to make your death quick.”

Starscream stalks the limestone platform with all the grace and pent-up danger of a captive lion, pacing the length of its cage. It can’t be easy or comfortable for a Seeker to be underground, cut off from the easy escape of open air. Bumblebee narrows his eyes, spark pulsing in its casing. 

“There’s nothing here,” he says. 

Without warning, Starscream turns on a dime and brings his null rays up to lock onto Bumblebee’s spark.

“Word of advice: don’t try to deceive a Decepticon,” Starscream says sweetly, walking forward with vicious intent the lock of his turbines and t-strut. The null ray aimed at Bumblebee makes a low buzz as it powers on, and the machinery down the barrel starts to generate a soft purple glow. “It doesn’t end well.”

 _Bolts_. Bumblebee knows he can’t win in a firefight with the Decepticon air commander, but if he can keep the fight close and personal, he might be able to use his speed to overcome Starscream’s strength. Bumblebee puts all his weight into his right foot, and he quickly writes a movement script for combat maneuvers. 

“You know what they say about bright yellow canaries in coal mines,” Starscream says as he starts to fire, but Bumblebee is already moving. The script executes, and his body launches into a roll, partially transforms in midair, and lands with his wheels already spinning in the clay. He accelerates, zig-zagging in vehicle mode while dodging wild beams from Starscream’s null rays. When he gets close enough, he slams on his front brakes and feels his rear bumper lift into the air. He pulls another partial transformation trick and uses his hands to carry his forward momentum into a handspring that slams his back feet into Starscream’s chest. 

Notoriously top-heavy, Seekers have poor balance on their own two feet, and Starscream goes flying. Bumblebee follows up his advantage, racing over to Starscream’s prone body to try to get into close quarters where the null rays can’t reach. Starscream kicks out his legs when Bumblebee tries to duck under his guard, but Bumblebee clears them with a leap. He lands in a full straddle across Starscream’s waist, his knees pinning the inboard ailerons on Starscream’s wings. Starscream immediately fires the thrusters in his heels to drive his knees into Bumblebee’s back and sends him rolling over Starscream. 

Starscream gets to his feet faster than Bumblebee would have thought possible, and when he stands, he looks like a sparkeater from a classic horror holovid. His face is twisted in a snarl, and Bumblebee’s headlights catch the neon purple sheen of energon as it drips down his teeth. Starscream is a coward and a crook and very often a cretin. 

He is also, in this exact moment, extremely dangerous.

Bumblebee scrabbles backwards, hands knocking loose shards of rock where his fingers dig into the limestone. His processor is so full of a sudden, instinctual fear that it has shoved all thought of strategy up and over the edge of his brain module. The warm glow of his headlights is countered by the growing, crackling build-up of purple down the barrel Starscream’s gun. Bumblebee struggles to stand, looking for anything that he can run to or hide behind, thinking a desperate apology to Optimus for failing, and—

The lights come on.

The shock overrides the fear: Bumblebee did not even know there _were_ lights to come on. Starscream stops mid-blast, confused, then raises his arm as if to fire anyways—but no purple glow reignites in the barrel. Bumblebee looks around, optics seeking the source of the light. He wonders if the cave itself is some sort of hardlight illusion; he can’t see a single trace of anything that isn’t _Earth cave_ , even with a pale white light flooding the cavern. He can just barely see a cave mouth on the far side of the crevasse, which must have been where Starscream had flown in.

"Tribes confirmed: Autobot and Decepticon," a voice says in Cybertronian, echoing in the chamber. "Victor confirmed: Starscream."

"Hey," Bumblebee says on reflex. "I had him."

"As _if_ , Goldenrod," Starscream says, switching to the null ray on his left and getting visibly angrier when that one won't fire either. He scowls and moves forward, arms pulled back as if to continue the fight the old-fashioned way. A blue light blossoms from the ceiling and collides with his front foot, leaving the distinct smell of ozone in its trail. Starscream yelps, hopping backwards, and Bumblebee climbs back to his feet.

"You may cease hostilities," the voice says, and it is tinged with the very slightest bit of reproach. The tone reminds Bumblebee of Optimus at his most paternal; he half expects _for the good of us all_ to follow. "Starscream has been recognized as the operator. Bumblebee has been recognized as the director."

“The operator of _what_?” Starscream spits, and realization settles into the base of Bumblebee’s t-struts like a heatsink malfunction. Across the platform, he sees Starscream’s face alight with joy and knows that the jet has had the same thought.

“The weapon,” Starscream breathes, triumphant. "D'you hear that, Fumblebee? You've lost, and the weapon is _all mine_.”

“I am not a weapon,” the voice says, and the paternal mask slips as it starts to sound annoyed. “Query: director, do you utilize ‘Bumblebee’ or ‘Fumblebee’?”

“My name is _Bumblebee_ ,” he says quickly. “Starscream’s just an ass.”

“Acknowledged.”

Bumblebee has to raise his voice over Starscream spluttering. “Sorry, but, if you aren’t a weapon, then what are you?”

The question reminds him uncomfortably of the war. Very few of the Autobots were combat ‘bots before rising tensions forced everyone to either pick a side or leave. He was lucky, he guesses; vehicular alt modes were useful in most contexts, but he has a lot of friends who had to be reformatted into tanks and guns. The Functionist precepts were not destroyed; they just adopted a combat theme. If you aren’t a weapon, then what _are_ you? If you aren’t a weapon, what _use_ are you? The war has washed them all in violent paint.

“I am Prometheus,” the voice says. “I serve as the Heir-class AI that governs the use of the Pyre.”

Even with white light filling the cave, there is nothing that resembles a weapon or fire: just more awful damp that makes Bumblebee itch with rust. As much as he loves the Earthlings, he hates how wet it is on this organic planet. The crevasse on the far side of the platform is still just as dark and fathomless; the walls are the same blue-grey limestone with dirty-white veins of calcite running like lightning strikes through it. He can’t see where the light or the AI’s voice is coming from, let alone where the power generators and storage facilities necessary to maintain an _Heir-class_ AI would be housed. 

“Who created you?” he asks, because, despite the Terran name, the AI’s voice and mannerisms are clearly Cybertronian. Plus, it had said _tribes_ , like the thirteen _original_ tribes—

“Solomus created the Pyre. Onyx Prime created me to govern it.”

The words strike chords. Two names of legend spoken without preamble in a dark, ignoble cave on a backwater planet. Not just names from legend, but the root of their religion, spoken millions of years and lightyears away. Starscream and Bumblebee trade a look of solidarity, momentarily united by a thread of shared Cybertronian culture: one of the very few left between them.

“You expect us to believe that?” Starscream says at last, but he sounds uncertain. “How would something from the Guiding Hand and the Thirteen have ended up on this shitty rust-bucket of a planet?”

“The same way you did, I suppose,” the AI says, and Bumblebee has to take a second to marvel at whoever would have created an AI capable of so much sarcasm. If it really _were_ created 12 million years ago, the technology was much more advanced than any of the surviving texts indicate. “Look, do you intend to utilize the Pyre or not?”

“Yes,” Bumblebee says, and Starscream sneers at him.

“‘Bee, don’t tell me you think Solomus actually invented this thing.”

Bumblebee glares at him across the floor of the cave, trying not to feel childish or overly optimistic at what seems like evidence—real evidence—of the existence of the Guiding Hand and the peaceful nature of the Thirteen Primes. “I think we should at least try it. We can go back to punching dents in each other if it's fake.”

Starscream grins at him, fangs glinting. “All right, fine. Prometheus? Let’s go.”

The AI lapses into what sounds like a bored customer service voice as he explains the rules by rote. The device requires two people to control it: one operator, and one director. The necessity of having two people—two _rivals_ —was why Bumblebee was unable to activate it alone, and why it had gone unnoticed on Earth for so long. It was designed to show the consequences of different choices with the intent of finding the most beneficial terms of peace. 

Starscream puts his hands on his hips, anger vibrating in his erect wings. “I thought this thing was powerful enough to _end wars_. You make it sound like a conversation starter.”

“It _was_ used to end wars,” Bumblebee argues. “Through knowledge, not violence.”

Prometheus clears his nonexistent throat imperiously, and continues his explanation. According to him, the Pyre can only be used to explore the outcomes of a single choice made by one of the participants. The operator chooses which choice to explore, and the director chooses how it changes. 

“Hey, how come ‘Bee gets a say when he _lost_?” Starscream interrupts again.

“I am intended to achieve peace. The weaker bot must be able to iterate,” Prometheus chides, and his voice turns patronizing. “ _Usually_ mechs would come having already agreed upon their roles. Combat as a determinator was a last resort. Now, where would you like to start?”

Across four million years, they’ve both made a lot of questionable choices. Bumblebee feels as though they are on the very edge of a precipice. This is Schrodinger’s machine: turn it on, and either the myths are real and wonderful, or this is yet another cosmic disappointment created by the Cybertronian race.

“Let’s try something an Earth AI couldn’t know, something before we ever came to this shithole,” Starscream says at last, and Bumblebee is quietly grateful that he doesn’t have to be the one to take the first step. “What about the beginning of the war? Show me the senate building in Vos.”

The cave around them transforms effortlessly into the high-ceilinged hallway just outside of the Vosian senate auditorium, with gorgeously scrolled arches reaching up hundreds of feet to curl around stained glass windows holding each of the Thirteen Primes. The quality of the hologram is comparable to that of a cutting-edge 4D theater, one of the ones that the Cybertronian elite had spent hundreds of thousands of credits on before the revolution: before the visualization industry shifted their manufacturing towards war gaming.

In the space between Starscream and Bumblebee, a conversation is happening.

The projection of Starcsream looks—younger, somehow. Sharper, and there is a distinct lack of gouges on his chassis and wings. Starscream in real life is clearly particular about his appearance, but no amount of self-care routines can round out four million years of fighting. The hologram of Starscream is leaning towards someone that Bumblebee doesn’t recognize, which is odd: he feels as though he knows almost every Cybertronian at this point, on both sides of the war.

“I have every confidence that we’ll be able to come to a peaceful agreement with these Decepticon thugs,” Starscream says to the unknown mech, who is nodding thoughtfully. “Anyways, thanks for agreeing to go. I’ll see you tomorrow in Kaon.”

The other mech returns the sentiment and waves, heading somewhere offscreen. The Starscream in the holovid turns on his heel and, satisfied that he is alone, breaks into the meanest, nastiest grin Bumblebee has ever seen him wear. It takes a minute for the context of what he’s seeing to click in Bumblebee’s processor.

“Wait, _you_ did that? _You_ convinced the senate to go to Kaon for peace talks?” Bumblebee asks.

Starscream looks at him as though confused by his surprise. “Of course it was me. The senate was operating out of my precinct when Megatron was captured; I was the senator hosting the talks.”

It fits into the broader picture, of course: the Decepticon movement needed operatives within the senate for both influence or espionage. Starscream’s silver tongue made him ideal for the position, Bumblebee supposes, but it’s still a shock to know with certainty that the starting pistol for the war was loaded and primed by a mech not ten feet from him. That bomb was the death blow for Sentinel Prime’s empire. For the Decepticons, it was proof that they would settle for nothing less than rewriting Cybertronian society; for the Autobots, it marked the Decepticon movement as militant and amoral. Necessary or not, many considered it the point of no return for the Cybertronian race.

“But what if you _didn’t_ ,” Bumblebee says, gripped with a sudden urgency of purpose. “What if you just let them go, or held actual peace talks. If the Decepticons never blew up the senate, never killed hundreds of mechs under the guise of peace, maybe Optimus could’ve—could’ve—”

The world spirals away from Bumblebee, who is almost overcome by the possibility of stopping the schism by shifting a single domino. He can hardly imagine what Cybertronians might be like, what _he_ might be like, in a world without the war. Starscream, on the other hand, seems pensive and thoughtful in a way Bumblebee has rarely seen.

“No,” Starscream says at last. “No, this is the problem with all of you Autobots: no sense of long-term strategy.”

There is a rare cold cruelty to him as he turns and looks down his nose at Bumblebee, his aura of disgust somehow more cutting than usual. “What’s the point in looking at what could have been? Would you feel better fighting for a world in which _your_ friends are still alive, even if lower class bots are being ground into the dirt by the Functionists' heel? Or do you just need more things to cry about before you slip into recharge? Please. We have to look at how to change what’s _coming_.”

“How to put you in charge of the Decepticons, you mean,” Bumblebee says, stung.

“How to end the war,” Starscream corrects, parroting Bumblebee’s words from before. “Through _knowledge_. Come on, ‘Bee. Let’s kill Megatron.”

\---

Here is what they learn: Megatron is extremely hard to kill.

Starscream is livid, and Bumblebee is, grudgingly, very impressed. Over an hour of suggesting different tactics for deposing the leader of the Decepticons—slowly, quickly, violently, through elaborate subterfuge—Megatron always, somehow, gets the upper hand back. Part of the problem is that they can’t string multiple choices together: they can only influence the position of the very first domino in the _kill Megatron_ chain. Starscream set the time of the decision as after he returned to the Decepticon base, keeping the location carefully out of his instructions. He was initially providing plots for Bee to parrot to Prometheus, but after watching future-Starscream fail again and again and again, they started working through new tactics together.

It’s odd; Bumblebee would never have anticipated spending his afternoon scheming Megatron’s death with _Starscream_ . The soft light holograms fill the cave seamlessly; if not for the faint sound of rushing water and the occasional drip-drip from the stalactites, Bumblebee would hardly be able to tell that he was not actually onboard the Decepticon flagship. The scene shifts itself around a hologram of a potential future Starscream as he walks through the sterile chrome hallways of the _Nemesis_.

The real Starscream is watching his double with an intent, hyper-focused gaze that reminds Bumblebee of Ratchet when he’s locked in a particularly touch-and-go surgery. Bumblebee doesn’t have much hope for this round, honestly; both of them had clearly been running out of creative ideas. As expected, Megatron rounds the corner, Soundwave standing tall and impassive at his shoulder. Bumblebee turns away, barely listening to the banter he has memorized— _you’ve failed me for the last time, Starscream_ and _no, my lord Megatron, there’s been a misunderstanding!_ —and wincing at the now-familiar sound of a fusion cannon blast punching through half a foot of durasteel Seeker wing, arm, and finally, spark casing.

Prometheus’ voice cuts through the crackling, smoke-filled aftermath. “Are you finished?” he asks, and his voice sounds bored.

“Yeah, we’re done,” Bumblebee says, and he puts a begrudgingly sympathetic hand on Starscream’s shoulder, looking down at the Seeker on his knees in front of the remnants of his hologram self. When Starscream opens his mouth to protest, Bumblebee cuts him off. “No, Starscream. We’re not getting any closer to ending the war at this decision point. We’ve gotta look further down the road.”

Starscream sighs and stands, rolling his shoulders to loosen the joints. “As much as it pains me to admit it, I think you’re right. But we can’t know now what the pivotal crossroads are going to _be_. Unless—Prometheus, how far into the future can you take us?”

“The future is more difficult than the past,” Prometheus says, slow, as if loathe to admit a failing. “You must understand; these are all possibilities. The more uncertainties in the broader universe at the time of the decision, the less certain I can be of the conclusion.”

Starscream grins in the way that usually precedes some sort of mocking _fool! you’ve fallen into my trap_. “Show me what happens if we make the choice, right now, to walk out of this cave and never come back. Show me—five years from now.”

The cave around them seamlessly transforms into a field filled to the brim with corn stalks, stretching across impossibly flat land to the horizon. The waving green leaves are marred only by the dearly familiar shapes of the Ark and Optimus Prime, and the much less dear, but just as familiar, outline of Megatron. As the pair of them brighten into focus, Bumblebee notices a pair of dampener clamps around Megatron’s wrist. Even more significant than that, he sees something he never thought he’d see: Megatron’s left arm, bare of the fusion cannon that, alone, had taken as many Autobot lives as the Simanzi massacre.

“No, no, _no_ ,” Starscream is saying, aghast. “No, this is clearly another one of his tricks. Megatron would die before surrendering to the Autobots. Keep going forward; who takes over Cybertron?”

The holograms of the cornfield fall away like water, leaving something completely different in their stead. Bumblebee immediately recognizes the streets of the city where he was born and raised, though they are ancient and damaged in ways that indicate millennia of neglect. Thousands of Transformers line the walkways of those tattered streets around Iacon Tower, shouting happily and tossing confetti in celebration of whatever is happening on the tower’s balcony. Through the lights and streamers and flags, Bee can see a single figure bending over the railing and waving, regal and smug and stunning.

It’s Starscream, and he’s wearing the crown and cloak of Supreme Ruler of all Cybertron.

“ _lag_ ,” Bumblebee curses, aghast, while Starscream crows in victory both at his side and in the holovid. “No, no way. And even if there were a way, he couldn’t _keep it_. Prometheus, fast-forward a year.”

The scene changes again to show Starscream alone at a sprawling, elegant desk completely covered with yellow datapads. There is no crown on his head, but the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows opposite the desk is clearly from the top of Iacon Tower, and the stars twinkle merrily above a crumbling but still-living metropolis.

“You were saying, _Fumble_ bee?” the real Starscream says, smug as all hell.

“Shut up, Starscream. Prometheus, where am _I_?” Bumblebee demands. “I would never have—”

As if in answer, his holographic self appears within the scene, walking through an open doorway connected to the main study. 

“Star, seriously, come to bed,” the holographic Bumblebee says, and it sounds like it’s not the first time he’s asked. “You can go back to fighting Elita’s PR war in the morning, after you’ve gotten some recharge.”

In reality, Starscream and Bumblebee trade wary glances, caught off-guard. The scene plays out before them with a soft, almost dream-like quality. Starscream in the holovid sighs and closes the yellow datapad he was studying, stretching his wings out behind him as he grudgingly consents to leave his desk. He trades quips with Bumblebee as he moves to the sonic shower, discussing workarounds for bringing Kaon back online and relighting the Darkmount fires. It’s soft, and slow, and easy, even when they disagree about someone or something called Windblade.

“I know you can do the right thing,” Bumblebee is saying, and it is exactly the opposite of anything that the real Bumblebee has ever thought about Starscream.

In the scene, Starscream turns to him with a self-deprecating smile. “Because I’m the chosen one?”

“Because I know you. Because _I_ chose you,” Bumblebee says.

Starscream reaches out thoughtlessly, stops, then looks up at the ceiling as if to hide the smile that had sprung to his face. “I’m not sure I trust your track record with choosing, ‘Bee. You sure about this one?”

“Well, I _am_ an optimist, remember?”

They smile at each other, a little awkward and a little too close, and the city behind them bustles with new life and new hope. It’s soft and sweet and clearly a well-trod routine. Starscream sits on the edge of his circuit slab, and Bumblebee steps in between his spread legs, sure of his welcome. Bumblebee seems to put a hand to Starscream’s cheek, and Starscream turns his head gently into it.

Quietly, Starscream says, “I may not be able to touch you. But I think I can still make you feel this.”

As he reaches out to the Bumblebee in the holovid, the Bumblebee in reality squeaks, “ _Stop_.”

The image freezes, perfectly preserving Starscream’s hand halfway to Bumblebee’s waist and Bumblebee’s slight smile, content and happy.

The real Starscream shakes himself out of a reverie. “You are _shitting me_. The most likely end to this whole war is—is me and _Goldenrod_?”

“With _Starscream_ ruling Cybertron?”

They can’t see him, but Bumblebee gets the distinct feeling that Prometheus has just shrugged. “I don’t make the data,” Prometheus says, lax and uninterested. “I just report on it.”

“Show me the data, then,” Bumblebee challenges, and the scene around them changes as Prometheus walks them through the major turning points of his predicted future. After his false surrender, Megatron easily escapes his Autobot prison and wreaks merry hell from inside the ranks. Before he can clinch victory, however, he is diverted from the war by Galvatron’s sudden and violent arrival. Autobots and Decepticons alike challenge Galvatron in a battle that nearly destroys Cybertron and removes both Optimus Prime and Megatron from action. Eventually, Megatron returns, and Bumblebee decides to spare his life to keep the peace—an act he clearly regrets when Megatron’s plans to reconquer Cybertron wreak enough havoc to enable Starscream to take over.

This time, after showing Starscream’s coronation, the hologram washes away completely, leaving only the empty cave and the faint sound of running water. 

Bumblebee is quiet; he can feel the weight of each of those decisions on his shoulders already. The dripping of water in the background sounds like the ticking of a clock. 

“I’m still the director,” Bumblebee says, with durasteel in his voice. “We’re still at the same decision point as before, but I choose to walk out of here determined to kill Megatron when he comes back.”

Prometheus sets the scene at the moment of Megatron’s reappearance, with Megatron looking more like a stripped exoskeleton than a tyrant. He dies, his neon-green spark fading into embers in the crisp night air, and when his last light fades, Decepticons and Autobots erupt into a wild, thrashing mosh pit of battle. The unaligned Cybertronians—for that is who Bumblebee couldn’t recognize: strangers who came home after the fighting—outnumber the combatants ten to one, and they eject everyone from the city walls. Starscream and Bumblebee watch their holographic selves go separate ways. Both groups make untidy camp a few miles away from both each other and from the home for which they had fought endlessly to save.

On the outskirts of the encampment, Bumblebee wanders away from the makeshift walls. The holovid projection follows his tracks as they cut into the red rust dunes and stop, at last, at the foot of where the Manganese Mountains used to twist in sharp ribbons from Iacon to Helex. He stares up at the dim grey of Luna 2, lost and hopeless and alone. Honestly, when a red and white jet wings through the air towards him, the real Bumblebee isn’t even surprised.

“So much for not wanting anyone to leave,” Bumblebee’s hologram says when Starscream transforms and lands in front of him. “And look, for what it’s worth? I’m sorry.”

“We can still fix this,” Starscream says. “If you’re willing to _actually_ trust me this time around.”

They shake hands warily, but when they look into each other's eyes, their gazes linger.

The real Starscream makes a choking sound. “Are you just, are you making this up to taunt us?”

“ _Data_ ,” Prometheus repeats.

Before anything else can happen between the two bots in the scene, a huge explosion erupts in a mushroom cloud of red smoke and jagged debris behind them. Starscream and Bumblebee turn as one, and, with a matched set of desperation and speed, race together over the brilliantly crimson sea of rust. On the crest of the tallest dune, they stagger to halt, staring in shock at the great titan that has arisen from the dust and decay between the Decepticon camp and the city of Iacon. The titan stares into the horizon with dead eyes, and a pulsing black vortex swirls in the hole where its spark should be.

On the ground near the titan’s feet, the greatest warriors of both factions lay like nothing more than matchsticks that had been struck against this monolith and left to burn themselves to ash. Starscream and Bumblebee pick their way across the bodies of friends and foes alike as they move closer. Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Arcee, and each of the Constructicons: all reduced to mangled pieces of intertwined machinery. The black vortex expands rapidly above their heads, and when Bumblebee squints too long into it, he sees a single yellow eye sitting triumphant at its very center. 

In the holovid, the universe itself collapses to a single point, and Starscream and Bumblebee are left staring, open-mouthed, at pitch-black nothingness.

“Wait, if someone kills Megatron, the _universe ends_?” Starscream screeches, and Bumblebee can almost hear the foundation of his personality start to crack as the _kill Megatron_ column crumbles. 

“Alright,” Bumblebee says grimly. “Let’s try again. When Megatron surrenders during the war, I’ll convince Prime to transport him offworld immediately. The Autobot army can probably defeat Galvatron if they aren’t incapacitated by his deception, right?”

The scene changes once again, but this time, Bumblebee doesn’t recognize the new environment. The room that materializes is small, crowded with equipment in varying stages of disrepair and lit by flickering, dim fluorescents. Eventually, Bumblebee realizes that he is looking at a wartime bunker full of machinery and energon-stained bots stretched to their absolute limits. Although the room is new, the bots are recognizable: Hound is poring over a map of what looks like greater Tesarus; Wheeljack is tinkering with a massive machine gun rife with patchwork; and Ironhide is at a makeshift communications station handling supply chain logistics.

The holograms of Starscream and Bumblebee are at the central war console, arguing and gesturing at the projection of the battlefield in front of them. The field looks like an abandoned picnic swarming with angry red ants. At last, the two of them reach some sort of agreement, and Starscream steps forward to address the room at large.

“Alright, everyone,” he says, sounding almost— _almost_ —dignified. All activity quiets immediately. “I know this is hard. Many of you have fought against me; almost all of you have fought each other. But every time you raised your weapon, you were fighting for Cybertron, and I need you to fight for it again. I need you at your best, even though most of us don’t have a lot of ‘best’ left. So look, get a few hours of recharge while you can. I’ll see you in the ready room at 0800.”

Everyone else stands wearily and drifts out of the room, lacking the energy to do more than acknowledge each other as they leave. Even Wheeljack, who always seems to operate at 110% power, barely musters a goodbye. The door shuts behind him with a soft click.

Starscream looks over at Bumblebee in the now-vacant room, smirking faintly. “I still can’t believe I’m relying on the Autobots to keep my optics lit.”

“Honestly, it’s not the Decepticon bit that bothers me,” Bumblebee ripostes, wry and tired. “It’s mostly just the _you_ bit.”

Starscream huffs, but it’s playful, and he saunters over to where Bumblebee stands. The real Bumblebee doesn’t see anything unusual in the movement, but, out of the corner of his eye, he sees the real Starscream stiffen. 

“Oh no,” that Starscream says fatalistically, watching his hologram self with mounting dread.

In the projected scene, Starscream puts one hand on Bumblebee’s shoulder and hooks his other hand beneath Bumblebee’s hood, pulling him close and lifting up his chest. Bumblebee rises up on his toes to press his lips to Starscream’s, quick and easy.

“We should get some rest,” he says, his voice a little shivery even as he’s leaning up into another kiss. “We, oh, Star—Starscream, wait. We don’t have much time before the next wave of Galvatron’s sweeps.”

“No, we don’t,” Starscream says, red eyes burning like twin embers. “So we should make the most of the time we have.”

He coaxes Bumblebee backwards until Bumblebee’s back hits the war console, then shifts his hands to lift Bumblebee up on top of it. Bumblebee’s legs fall open to bracket Starscream’s hips, and his arms are already reaching up and around Starscream’s thrusters. Behind Bumblebee’s head, the projection of the battlefield flickers, battleships disappearing and reappearing as he moves. 

“Is this—shouldn’t we—” Bumblebee says, but his hips are lifting up of their own accord to give Starscream’s questing fingers better access. His fans are whirring at maximum speed, and the real Bumblebee almost thinks he can feel the heat from the vented exhaust.

“One more time,” holographic Starscream says, putting three fingers on Bumblebee’s panel and sliding it open with a casual and practiced ease. Bumblebee’s spike pressurizes upward almost immediately. It’s a perfect depiction of Bumblebee’s spike, too: yellow with black accents and tapered to a point. “Once more, for us.”

“ _Holy bolts_ ,” Starscream says, and the voice is so similar to the one in the holovid, husky even at a high pitch, that Bumblebee’s brain takes a second to remember that he’s not watching this alone in his berth. So overcome by what he’s seeing, Bumblebee can’t seem to activate his vocal processor in order to make the scene stop.

Through some unspoken communication, the holographic Bumblebee transforms his spike into a valve, and Starscream grabs his hips again and lifts him up. In one quick movement, Starscream slides open his own panel and releases his spike. It’s only visible for a second before he slides Bee directly on top of it; it goes in smoothly, easily, in a single stroke. It’s a shock, honestly; the smoothness of the motion is something you only see when someone has _reformatted_ their valve configuration to another’s spike. It’s a form of intimacy that’s rare even in professional interfacing holovids, and Bumblebee’s spark races at the sight.

In the holovid, Bumblebee tilts his head down to rest on Starscream’s cockpit, his fingers gripping the back of Starscream’s head and chest as Starscream effortlessly lifts him up and down on his spike. The cave’s acoustics echo every shuddering gasp, ever broken whirr of their fans. Bumblebee watches his own hand—correct to every minor servo—drift from Starscream’s chest down to where they intersect, where Starscream’s spike is pounding into his valve, where shiny pink lubricant is dripping into a small but definite puddle on the floor. Bumblebee’s perfectly detailed fingers split into a V around Starscream’s spike to feel every stroke against them. The holographic Starscream shudders at the sensation, and Bumblebee is desperate to know what they’re thinking and feeling, here at the end of everything.

“That’s it, ‘Bee. Give it to me; just give yourself over,” Starscream is saying, and the real versions of both bots lean in closer to hear it better. “You fit around me so perfectly. _Primus_ , ‘Bee. You were forged for me. Mine in every way—in every—possible—way.”

He’s accentuating each word with harder and harder thrusts, and Bumblebee is barely hanging on.

“Star, please,” Bumblebee says, choking out words with his optics shining too bright. “Yours, only yours. _Oh,_ fuck. _Please_ , Starscream.”

They watch as Starscream’s grip tightens, Bumblebee’s hips shift, and the brutal pace that Starscream had set starts to fall to pieces. Starscream puts Bumblebee’s back against the war console and goes in for harder, longer strokes. At last, Starscream pulls out fully, and his spike is a gorgeous red and white, with blue lights running all the way to the tip. It’s huge and clearly custom-made, and the real Bumblebee can’t help but stare until Starscream sinks into Bumblebee one last time. In the hologram, Starscream and Bumblebee shudder to a stop, their optics blazing in a rolling mix of red and blue as they initiate a neural connection during their overloads. Starscream’s knees buckle, and he has just enough presence of mind to get them both safely to the ground. He keeps his spike in Bumblebee as they drop, then pulls the smaller bot more fully onto his lap once they settle on the floor.

After a couple of minutes, they both reboot from the overload. Their eyes are still a hazy purple, so they’re clearly maintaining the neural connection through the afterglow.

“Think we’ll make it out of this?” Starscream asks, his voice a little staticky. He runs a hand over the back of Bumblebee’s helm, thumbing one of Bumblebee’s horns on the way down. Both of them shiver, sharing the sensation.

“Yeah,” Bumblebee says. “With the two of us? Absolutely.”

With that, the scene fades, leaving only the faint sound of their synced engines to echo around the cave.

“ _What the fuck_ ,” Starscream says, his voice even higher than usual. He looks at Bumblebee apprehensively, and then—speculatively? Bumblebee can’t help but stare back. He drops his eyes briefly to below Starscream’s waist, unable to help but wonder if Starscream is actually packing that monster of a spike.

“Ok,” Bumblebee says, forcing his eyes back to the center of the cave and steeling himself. He considers deleting the last few minutes from his short term memory, but finds, somehow, that he just can’t. “Ok, let’s try this again.”

\---

They watch the universe end four more times, watch Megatron take over Cybertron twice, and watch themselves have sex _nine more times_ before they call it.

“Are you satisfied?” Prometheus asks, his voice a droll monotone.

Bumblebee can’t help but stare at where the latest vid is frozen mid-scene, with the holographic version of his own head thrown back, his mouth open, and his eyes dilated as wide as possible and blazing with blue light. 

“Yes?” he says blankly, uncomprehending.

“So that’s really your O-face?” Starscream asks, with a sense of familiarity that Bumblebee thinks has _definitely_ not been earned, even after—well. Even after having seen Bumblebee’s face while overloading more than any other bot alive. 

Bumblebee jerks back to himself with a shake and finally gives into his urge to shout at Prometheus. “Do you _really_ expect me to believe that there is no decent universe in which Starscream and I don’t—don't—”

“Fuck?” Starscream supplies, and Bumblebee simmers in anger and not a little bit of sexual frustration.

There is a thoughtful silence and the faint whir of machinery that is vaguely reminiscent of someone thumbing through a stack of files. At last, Prometheus says, “Well, it's difficult to really pin that down. In some likely universes, he’s a ghost. In some, _you’re_ a ghost. Some may argue that that's not really sex—"

" _Excuse me._ "

"—but you always seem to give it a really good try nonetheless."

Bumblebee’s jaw drops, and he forces the irresponsible servos to shut with a loud snap. “No, no way. There’s no way that _Starscream_ and I are some sort of universal constant. That’s impossible.”

Starscream coughs. “ _More_ or _less_ impossible than some ancient Prime knowing exactly what our spikes look like?”

At that, Bumblebee feels his cheeks burn hot enough to light up any infrared sensors within a mile radius, and he has to reroute coolant towards his face before he can speak. “Clearly this isn’t a weapon. It’s some sort of mind-reading role-playing sex toy, or—or some sort of ancient, colossal joke. Look, I’m out. I’m done. Prometheus, thanks, but no thanks.”

The holographic room around them flickers and then vanishes, winking out of existence with a mocking air and no goodbye. Bumblebee turns back to Starscream, expecting to get a face full of a null ray, a fist, or a boot. Instead, he finds Starscream just standing next to him, huge and powerful and grinning. Bumblebee’s cooling fans accelerate as he suddenly, vividly recalls the ninth attempt, when he watched himself let Starscream tie him to the recharge slab and ride him until he screamed.

“ _Primus,"_ Bumblebee says with feeling, not sure how he’s going to face Starscream on the battlefield after this. Starscream laughs and leans down, close enough that Bumblebee feels hot wisps of exhaust on his face. It shouldn’t turn him on, but by the Thirteen, it does.

“Say, ‘Bee. Sure you don’t want to skip a few steps and get straight to the good part?” Starscream asks, and Bumblebee shivers, his valve contracting in anticipation after a full day of listening to Starscream use that exact tone during sex.

“No?” he says, trying to pull his processors out of the gutter. He has to reboot his language center before he can respond. “Wait, _yes_ , I’m sure I don’t want to. It wasn’t real, Starscream, so we can just report back and—and forget about it.”

Starscream laughs and straightens up to his full height, and Bumblebee ruthlessly kills the emotional process that sends a chord of heat through his spark. 

“Alright,” Starscream says indulgently. “I liked that first universe best anyways. See you after the war, then, _Honeybee_.”

Bumblebee watches him transform and fly to the exit on the other side of the crevasse, his spark filled with longing and his valve filled with lubricant. He scowls. Nothing is certain in this war or this world, he reminds himself, and there is definitely no such thing as sparkmates. Starscream is the _enemy_ ; he can’t let himself forget that.

And yet, as he transforms in preparation for the long and uncomfortable drive home, he can't help but think: it's only a matter of time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! There are quite a few Easter eggs sown throughout the fic (especially with respect to Onyx Prime & the Dark Cybertron/Unicron series), so if you have any questions, please let me know. I might have an interesting answer! 
> 
> Come find me on @chelthulu for more robots, and, as always, all feedback is loved.


End file.
